A wide variety of animal training halters have been used to help control and train animals. Of particular interest is a bitless halter shown in U.S. Pat. No. 3,949,538 to the inventor of the current invention. The halter shown in that patent incorporated one loop which encircled the nose and a second loop which encircled the head of the animal. The nose and head loops were interconnected so that when force was applied to the reins the nose and head loops contracted to apply pressure to the animal's head. Knots were positioned at strategic locations along the halter so that when the halter was tightened specific nerves were pressed upon by the halter and knots.
Although the invention shown in U.S. Pat. No. 3,949,538 proved to be particularly successful in training animals, it also proved to be difficult to place over a horse's head. The difficulty arose because the head loop of the harness had to be placed over the horse's ears which are particularly sensitive. Placing the head loop over the horse's ears also created problems because a person had to be relatively tall to hold the reins above the horse's ears or else the trainer had to get the horse to hold its head down so that the harness could be placed about the horse's head. Since many horses are not predisposed to being harnessed, getting them to hold their head down was often a problem.
It is economically advantageous to produce halters using a single strand of flexible cord which can be arranged in the desired configuration. To construct a halter which provided easy installation about the horse's ears and the desired automatic contraction and expansion with the desired single strand construction posed a significant challenge.
This invention is directed to solving the above problems and other problems which are discussed below or which are implicit in the nature and function of the training halter described herein.